The battle for ‘a strong independent media’ in Salford
Article published: Saturday, January 10th 2009
Labour MP Hazel Blears says she wants ‘a strong independent media’. But local publications are facing increasing competition from council-funded freesheets – including in Salford, Blears’ constituency. Despite Blears’ proclaimed support , community-based magazine The Salford Star which this year won the Plain English Campaign’s Best Regional Newspaper Award and came second in the prestigious Paul Foot Award for investigative journalism was unable to print its Christmas edition. What can the future hold for independent media?
“A strong independent media is a vital part of any democracy,” said Hazel Blears, the minister for communities and local government when she launched the Communities in Control white paper recently.
And certainly, the role of local media has been much discussed of late. But for some local publications, the problem isn’t the BBC’s local online video plans it’s local councils which are using their huge publicly-funded advertising budgets to finance mini versions of Pravda.
Around the London boroughs, fortnightly council newspapers have sprung up. What they don’t contain, of course, is any true community dissent or investigations into how local taxes are spent.
In Tower Hamlets, the independent East London Advertiser is lodging a formal complaint with the Audit Commission as no one seems to be able to find out the real cost of the council’s free weekly paper, East End Life.
Here in Salford, Blears’ backyard, on a peanuts budget, we produce the Salford Star a free, 76-page, fiercely independent magazine staffed by volunteers, with a print run of 15,000, which gives the community a voice to tell the truth about the city’s “regeneration”.
We won top magazine in the north-west this year at the How Do awards beating titles such as Cheshire Life and were runners-up in the Paul Foot awards for our investigative journalism.
The Star is about democracy, empowerment and holding public bodies to account. We’re doing everything that Blears is urging, yet last year our application for devolved funding from the city’s community committee – another of Blears’ ideas – was ripped up by Salford Council on the grounds that we didn’t meet its criteria of being “balanced”.
However, the leader of Salford Council has decided to spend £175,000 to take its “magazine” Life In Salford monthly, and stuff the pages with its own adverts to help pay for it. Balanced? Earlier this month, Lib Dem councillor Steve Cooke resigned from its editorial board, saying it provided “a thin veneer of democratic respectability to an often misleading and relentlessly and unjustifiably upbeat publication”, and that he wanted to play “no further part in legitimising council propaganda”.
The decision to expand Life In Salford is expected to be rubber-stamped at a full council meeting where the ruling Labour party has a majority. Meanwhile the Star’s Christmas issue did not appear, and the magazine has been put on hold until we can raise funds to print it. You’re doing a great job, Hazel. “Strong independent media”? My arse.
Stephen Kingston is the editor of the Salford Star
Originally published in the Guardian Media online section http://www.guardian.co.uk/media
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